About two months ago I setup my very own Kindergaten class for making "baby-step" cheeses. My Ricottas were soon followed by Ricotta Salatas and Mozzerellas. The Ricottas and Mozzerellas were fine but the Ricotta Salata batches were definitely far too salty. Lesson learnt!

Having completed my apprenticeship (or so I belived at the time) about a month ago, I then proceeded with batches of Liecester, Derby and Colby in quick succession . I have about 1kg (2 lbs) of each doing their thing, duly waxed and labelled, in the vegetable drawers at the bottom of the fridge. And now comes the big wait. Not knowing how they will turn out is, for me, part of the mystique of this facinating new hobby.

Trust a beginner to keep things nice and simple, my current batch is a batch of Brie! Somewhere along the road I confused issues a bit and I added Ash to the salt in a 1:10 ratio. The outside does not quite look like the pale white/cream Brie that I am used to, but what the heck, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The four rounds are in their third day of air-drying and were atomised yesterday with P.Candidum mold after being previously salted. I now waiting in eager expectation for the mold spores to appear.

Sounds like you're having fun. I forgot to mention that my mother was born and raised in SA and most of her family still lives there. In fact, in the 1980's my mother moved back and lived in Cape Town for about 7 years. I've been to SA but not since I was young.

This Cape Town of ours is a really great place. In fact we think we live in paradise.

This cheese making bug has brought out the deficiencies in our reasoning.

We have a wonderful climate. It never drops below 32 degrees F. No need for air-conditioners or central heating in the home. Hah hah. We are just coming out of winter and the indoor temperature is 60 degrees F.

Well, you may. Cheeses need to have a slightly warmer and more humid environment while they ripen. A typical refrigerator is too cold for satisfactory ripening, often hovering under 40F/4C most of the time. A cheese envronment typically hovers between 50-60F/10-15.5C with an RH (relative humidity) ranging between 85%-99%. Your refrigerator could be sucking up any stray humidity inside to keep the food fresh and dry. That's not good for living cheese, unless of course it's vacuum-sealed or waxed.

The Brie has a really healthy looking growth of PC all over and I have just bagged it.

I could not find a source of cellophane cheese paper so I purchased some food-grade poly-prop bags, punched a good few holes in with a pin to make it breathable and packed the Brie inside. Now the big wait till December - January.

Over the weekend I started a batch of Camembert. So far all is looking great. I salted it this afternoon and it is now drying. I will add the PC mould within the next day or two.

I know it is still early days but I have included a photo of the results so far.

As I mentioned in my first post, I mixed a bit of ash with my salt by mistake, but then, as I recall reading somewhere, it seems to retard unwanted moulds and also assists in the propagation of P.Candidum, so I continued using my mixture on the outside of these cheeses.

I have only sprayed the P.C on the outside and not mixed any with the milk.

So the grey that you see in the photo of the Camembert is the ash with the first signs of mould growth.

The Brie is really looking good (to me anyway) and a really healthy covering of mould has covered most of the outside.

Congratulations!!! Something no recipe ever told me was to "pat down" PC mold when it grows into a thick carpet and to keep patting it down until it gets moved to the fridge. I actually don't usually move mine to the fridge at all until they are fully ripe. Do keep us updated. Love seeing photos of what other people are making.